There are only two weeks left untill the Blizzard Convention, Blizzcon opens its gates. But for now, we got only the information our lovely Bashiok lefts in the official Battle.net forums. Today he speaks about the Levelcap, the weight of items and treasures.

Asked about the maximun Levelcap, Bashiok only repeats an old statement of Jay Wilson:

The first and last thing said on it was in an interview with Jay at WWI when we first announced, and paraphrasing that: we will probably keep it about the same, level 99, but it always seemed like an arbitrary number to stop at so we may up it to 100.

Futhermore Bashiok, posts a litte article about the itemmanagent and the weight that items could have in Diablo 3:

A weight system is simply a different approach to inventory restrictions, and it’s actually fairly similar to a grid based system except that weight systems are generally augmented by a character stat instead of being item based upgrades.The main issue with these systems as they relate to Diablo III is they add an additional value to items. That secondary value works to complicate and thus slow down the inventory management of a player, drawing their attention away from the action, which is of course the main focus for us with Diablo III.I’ve played a few RPGs with weight systems, and they’re among my favorite games of all time, but it’s a case of choosing which systems works best for each game.

At last he explains, that there will be no locked treasures in Diablo 3 anymore. In addition to this he added, that treasures are going to have higher quality loot but they will be less placed, than in Diablo 2. Because of this Dungeons in Diablo 3 will be more interesting.

First the old function of the Alt key  will not change in Diablo 3. We can still press our beloved Alt key and we can still mix it with the Windows key to mess up our Level 87 Hardcore Char. But function of pressing the Alt key to see the names of items lying und the ground has been improved as Bashiok explains in his new Battle.net post.

“The way it works now is that when an item drops the name shows for about 5 seconds and then they fade out and disappear. Pressing Alt shows all dropped item names for again about 5 seconds and then the names fade out and disappear.

I actually didn’t like it at first, I liked the on/off state of pressing or not pressing Alt, but with the names showing immediately after drop and having a sort of “grace period” after just tapping Alt, it’s really grown on me and is a lot more intuitive. It’s a lot easier to see what just dropped quickly and decide if you care, and it isn’t necessary to constantly hold down Alt while scavenging after a large fight.

I still want to see -nopickup return but I haven’t really asked anyone what the possibility of that is. I don’t think it would work well with the current system, so options may have to be a possibility.”

If you look at this new screenshot, you can see a dead NPC and some beasts. But where is the players charakter? A Diablo 3 fan noticed that too, and asked Blizzard about this interesting issue. Surprisingly, he got an answer. Bashiok denies nothing, in the same breath he clarifies nothing too.

This isn’t the first screenshot to be released where the player character isn’t shown.

It’s an option in our editor to hide various elements, and in the case of these shots the player was hidden to show off the environments and monsters.

And yes those are lootable corpses.

Diablo-3.biz thinks: An interesting rumor, but nothing more. Blizzard can remove this feature instantly, if they don’t like it.

As promised Blizzard updates the official Diablo 3 with new media. Rather they added four new artworks and screenshots. These new pictures are almost uninteresting, but one special artwork need further attention. On this specials artwork we can see a new creep. The Dune Trsehser.

Next our Battle.net Posting-Guru Bashiok explains some new facts about the physics in relation to the disappearance of corpses:

“In a single player game with a class that maybe doesn’t use a ton of skills that interact with corpses in a significant way this could work, but in a multiplayer game there could potentially be hundreds of corpses piling up as they’ve never come to rest due to all of the player skills firing off.”

Within an interview with Crispy Gamer Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce and public relations guy Bob Colayco clearifys, that Diablo 3 is going to support DirectX 10 and Windows Vista. Furthermore they added an interesting statement about the new “Battle.net 2.0”.

“Some of the ambitious goals that we have in terms of the online experience and Battle.Net — bringing that to the next level, and contemplating the things that are going on in social networks and other online gaming services like Xbox Live — I think that’s where we’re going to have some of the biggest challenges.”

With a litte phantasie you can read between the lines, that Blizzard has taken a look at social networks like Facebook and other gaming-networks like Xbox Live or Valve’s Steam. In the end we can imagine, what this meas to the future Battle.net

It took quite some time, but after the official announcement of Diablo 3 from Blizzard, there was much work to do. Now that our german part is already finished, we concentrated also on the english part.

The redesign of the english part of diablo-3.net had to be done, and the first part is now finished.

The content is now up to date, and we are now able to provide all our english speaking visitors with actual and brand new informations about Diablo 3.

From now on, we will keep the english part, simultaneously with the german part up to date, to ensure a smooth and fluent flow of information regarding Diablo 3.

The design is still the old one, but we will change it in the next few days.

We promised you a live coverage from the WWI 2008 in Paris and all you received was an error message.
And now you are looking for brand new information about Diablo 3 and nothing has changed on this site.  The wish-list section is still online like the rumours part and the design is also still the same.

We are really,really,really sorry for all the problems caused by a server crash during the days the WWI took place. It took too much time to fix that problems.
Our new server is running stable now and we are trying our best to bring you all the Information about Diablo 3 you are looking for, clearly laid out through our brand new design, as soon as possible.

According to a news at Gamesindustry.biz, Rop Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment, confirmed in a question and answer session at the Games Developer Conference this week that Blizzard is going to announce a new game at the WWI this year. He said:

“So you want me to announce the game before our announcement? No offense, but I think there’s like 300 people here, and I’ll be ripped apart by 8000 people there if I pre-announce it – but it’s going to be really exciting. I think everybody here will be really excited about the announcement.”

This is really exciting. Isn’t it? Let’s all hope that this game which is going to be announced is Diablo 3

As promised we will be live at the WWI 08 in Paris to inform you about the latest news and rumours of the game we all are wishfully waiting for. So keep an eye on Diablo-3.net during the 28th and 29th of July when Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational takes place.
We had to prepare ourselves for the event and there were a lot of other thinks to do during the last weeks. That’s why there haven’t been any news posts in that time.

In the run-up to Blizzard conventions there were always rumours afloat that Diablo 3 could be announced but till now this was unfortunately not the case. But now the rumour mill is spinning like a cpu cooler on a midsummer’s day.

At first Xfire.com wrote in it’s WWI section :

“Get behind the scenes with Xfire during WWI to:
Follow the opening ceremony and discover what new game will be announced in our chat rooms together with hundreds of other Blizzard fans“

But the part of the sentence regarding the announcement was removed a short time later.

Blizzard is now teasing on it’s Website. Every day a new picture appears and more and more runes/symbols are revealed. One of them is definitely a Hel rune. We don’t want do speculate what this teaser is about. There are a lot of fans out there who can do that job for us;-)
Wednesday:

Tuesday:

Monday:

In three days we’ll know what Blizzard is up to….

The same procedure as every year…

PARIS, France. May 12, 2008 — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for its third BlizzCon™ gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises. In response to the demand to accommodate more attendees, this year’s event has expanded from two convention halls to three.

“Whenever we’ve been able to meet and interact with Blizzard gamers from around the world, it’s been a great experience for us,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re looking forward to seeing even more of our players at this year’s BlizzCon and delivering another entertaining and informative event for them.”

BlizzCon will offer a wide variety of activities to help all attendees get the most out of the two-day event. In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, attendees will be able to enjoy:

• Hands-on play time with upcoming Blizzard Entertainment releases
• Discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers
• Competitive and casual tournaments for players to showcase their talents
• Areas and activities devoted to licensed products such as the World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game
• Costume, machinima, and character sound-alike contests with great prizes
• Commemorative merchandise based on the Blizzard Entertainment franchises
• A silent auction
• More exciting activities to be announced

Tickets for BlizzCon will go on sale in the next few weeks at a price of $100 USD per person. As the event draws closer, further details will be announced on the official BlizzCon website: www.blizzcon.com.